Before I Die – Part II

Mark S. Roberti, Director of Stewardship,

Heartland Parishes of Ellis County

In part one of this article I wondered aloud, before I die, will I have life figured out?  In God’s providence, why do things work as they do?  Do we, while on this journey, get to a point when we stop making significant progress?  On the day before “That Day” will I understand God’s ways significantly better than I do now? 

I also explained that I had recently read some of the writings of St. John Chrysostom that had helped me clear away some of the confusion.  This life is a pilgrimage, he explained.  Understanding our lives simply from the prisms of the past and the present are insufficient in understanding God.   God is also the God of our future, which has yet to unfold, and our eternal future which will never completely unfold in this life.

The analogy he made that poignantly struck me was that of a person on a pilgrimage across the desert who builds a beautiful mansion in the middle of the desert.  Why?  Why would a person do that?  Yet, we who are all on this same pilgrim journey do just that.   We seem to forget that we are even on a journey to eternal life.   The “now”, it would seem, becomes “the journey” and we lose sight of the original destination.  We lose sight of heaven.  

Chrysostom says, “If you are a Christian, no earthly city is yours…. Though we may gain possession of the whole world, we are nonetheless strangers and sojourners in it all!  We are enrolled in heaven: our citizenship is there! Let none of us, after the manner of little children, despise things that are great, and admire those that are little!”

The point of all this is that we will never really understand God’s plan for us if we ignore or misunderstand God’s purpose in allowing trials in our lives.  He describes the present life in terms of a wrestling school, a gymnasium, a battle, and a smelting furnace.  We are strengthened, refined, and/or transformed in the process of the test.  Preparedness makes all the difference in the contest.  Chrysostom strongly recommends a strong dose of self-denial in the training.  He recommends doing things for God and others rather than ourselves. 

God allows bad for the greater good.  He allows the devil to test us, to test our metal.  A smelter’s fire, he explains, purifies but also separates.  Piety cannot be worn as a mask through the tests of life.  A real trial will disclose who we are and separates a true believer from a pretender.  It is through the fires of our lives that we are forged into the person that God wants us to be.  

A faithful Christian should expect to be attacked by the devil.  Two kingdoms are at war.  We are “Christians” on the cosmic battlefield of that war.  When we act in a godly way or in holy boldness, we fight for God.  Prayer, service, sacrificial giving, fasting, kindness, gentleness, etc., are the weapons with which we fight.  When we sin, in all of its manifestations, we fight for the other side.  How peculiar, people who consider themselves on one side, fighting for the other?    Yet each of us, at times, does just that.

Stewardship is excellent training for the battle. It’s on the job training.  Stewardship of time is prayer and worship.  Is there any better form of stewardship?  Stewardship of talent is ministry and service.  What better way to reach out to others?  Stewardship of treasure is sacrificial giving, almsgiving.  And though we don’t emphasize fasting much when we promote the spirituality of stewardship, talk about self-discipline!   In the analogy of physical training, it is the wind-sprints.  I know when I used to train, wind-sprints were the hardest thing.  Yet, for stamina and endurance they were the most important thing.

We have a gentleman on one of our Heartland Parishes stewardship committees who commonly remarks, “Stewardship is not a sprint, it is a marathon.”  Getting across the desert to the “Promised Land”, eternal life, is not meant to be easy.  It is a test.  Yet the prize, the crown we attain, makes everything else inconsequential in comparison.  And the journey, here in this life, is the best part of living.  It’s just that we are often to disordered in our values, too busy, too concerned about the “now” to be preparing for “That Day”, the day we see God face to face.

Stewardship is that right path.  It pushes and prods us to order our lives in a godly way.  When we choose a stewardship way of life, a holy way of life, the journey itself is a joy.